Ben Kindel’s goal drought is common experience for young players

Entering their game on Thursday night, Pittsburgh Penguins rookie Ben Kindel will be riding a 14-game goal-less drought. Beyond that, he has just one goal in his past 19 games going back to early December. That does not necessarily mean he has not been playing well (because he still has been), but it is still eye-opening to see him go so long without a goal. Especially given the way he started the season.

But this is a good chance to bring up one of my biggest talking points in the NHL: Consistency is a myth. It does not exist.

At least not in terms of production. Effort is consistent. Overall play can be consistent. Your ability to drive possession and defend can be consistent. But when it comes to a player’s goal-scoring and point production there are always going to be peaks and valleys over the course of an 82-game season.

Some players have higher and longer peaks, others have deeper and longer valleys, but they all exist for everybody.

A 40-goal scorer does not average one goal every other game.

They score four goals in three games, go six games without a goal, score six goals in five games, then go eight without a goal, and so on and so on over the course of a season.

This is true for the best players in hockey.

It is especially true for young players in hockey.

The younger a player is, the more extreme some of those valleys can be. Inconsistencies are going to be a part of it. Eventually they are going to hit a rookie wall as they try to adjust to playing at the highest level of the sport against the best players in the world.

Kindel is simply in one of those valleys right now.

When it comes to young players, there are always going to be growing pains. The Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Macklin Celebrini experiences where an 18-year-old enters the league and immediately dominates are outliers. They are not common experiences. Even players like Jack Hughes and Nathan MacKinnon had their growing pains in the league before truly taking off offensively a couple of years in. And that is for top picks. It is even more true for players that get an immediate shot in the NHL that are picked lower in the draft.

Let’s consider some numbers here.

In the history of the league there have been 89 forwards that have played at least 14 games in the NHL at age 18, including 70 that have appeared in at least 40 games.

There have been 48 instances of one of those 18-year-olds going at least 14 games in a row without scoring a goal.

Further to the point, 75 of the 89 players on that list had at least one 10-game goal drought in their age 18 season. Several of those players had multiple 10-game goal droughts.

There is an extensive list of really good, and even great players on the 14-game-or-more list.

That list includes:

• Scott Hartnell, who has the longest goal-drought for an 18-year-old at 57 games. He also had a second drought of 17 games in that season.
• Owen Nolan, who went 29 games without a goal.
• Ryan O’Reilly with 23 games.
• Juraj Slafkovsky with 21 games.
• Joe Thornton with separate droughts of 21 and 17 games.
• Gordie Howe went 20 games without a goal in his age 18 season.
• Mark Messier went 19 games.
• Jack Hughes went 18 games and then another stretch of 14 games.
• Vincent Lecavalier went 17 games.
• Brendan Shanahan went 17 games and then again 14 games later in the season.
• Kirk Muller went 17 games.
• Jaromir Jagr went 16 games.
• Aleksander Barkov went 14 games.

Overall, I am not overly concerned with the actual goal total for him at this point, nor am I overly concerned that it has been a while since he scored a goal. This happens. You want to see young players on the team and look to the future? Sometimes this is what it looks like.

He is still on pace to score between 15-20 goals for the season, which would still be an outstanding rookie year for an 18-year-old. The Penguins biggest concern should be whether or not he is still playing well. For the most part, he still is. There has been a noticeable dip in his underlying numbers over this stretch of games, but his line has also been rotating wingers around him and his spot in the lineup has changed at times. There are a lot of adjustments to be made. The Penguins still seem to have a good player here that has a bright future in the NHL. This is just part of the process that players like him have to go through.